#happin

You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in... ↗

— Nick Hornby

#life #survival #death

When I die, don't come, I wouldn't want a leaf to turn away from the sun -- it loves it there. There's nothing so spiritual about being happy but you can't miss a day of it, because it doesn't last. ↗

— Frank O'Hara

#happiness #poetry #death

I want that. I want that awful intense and serious unhappiness, cos then I might feel better, and then I might be happy. ↗

— David Thewlis

#happiness #sadness #death

In actuality, we don't look for smiles in pictures of bliss, but rather, for the happiness in life itself. Painters know this, but this is preciously what they cannot depict. That's why they substitute the joy of seeing for the joy of life. ↗

— Orhan Pamuk

#joy-of-life #joy-of-seeing #painting #life

Where do we get the energy to keep on hoping and praying that things will get better? What makes us believe we DESERVE a happy life to begin with? Is this just an American phenomenon? We just assume that we are entitled to happiness? And when we do get the things we wished so hard for, are we happy? Or do we just want more...? And what about people in less developed countries who's lives are REALLY hard? People who live in places where infant death, widespread disease, rape, general oppression, poverty and starvation are the norm. Why do THEY keep going? Do they hope for happiness too, or do they think there are no other options but to keep living. I need to know. ↗

— Jessica Kenley

#happiness #death

There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance ... some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#happiness #harmony #keystones #love #marriage

What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed. ↗

— Albert Camus

#death

It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, but him who knows how to use with wisdom the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse than death, and is not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherland. ↗

— Horace

#death

It is utterly impossible to be happy without being grateful. ↗

— Toni Sorenson

#life

From across the woods, as if by common accord, birds left their trees and darted upward. I joined them, flew amount them, they did not recognize me as something apart from them, and I was happy, so happy, because for the first time in years, and forevermore, I had not killed, and never would. ↗

— George Saunders

#death #dying #happiness #death